This invention relates in general to digital processing systems and more specifically to a system for presenting, comparing and employing user-generated keywords for use in online product reviews.
Consumer opinions are useful to manufacturers, sellers, marketers and other participants in a commercial supply chain so that the participants may more effectively create, advertise and sell products and services. Knowledge of opinions can also be useful in many other areas such as opinion polls for government candidates, popularity of proposed laws; predicting financial securities, obtaining knowledge of social issues, etc.
Digital communication networks, such as the Internet, and popular presentation formats such as Hyper-Text Markup Language (HTML) as used on the World Wide Web (“web”) have provided many benefits for gathering opinions of consumers. The Internet allows efficient gathering of consumer opinions in the form of, for example, product reviews, brand rating, service reviews, etc. Users of computer systems are presented with a page that allows a user to type in a product review. The review can be read by an administrator and used to compile statistical information about the product.
Tabulated information for use in consumer product purchasing can include “specification-based information” such as specific facts about the product or service (technical specifications, features, etc.), calculated data (overall user “star rating,” price, etc.) and/or qualitative information that is determined by an expert, manufacturer, or other official source. Such specification based information is often obtained from a human expert, manufacturer, or other official source. While specification based information can be useful to consumers it may also present drawbacks since some consumers might not be able to easily interpret the specification-based criteria properly. Also, expert-based qualitative criteria may not be as accurate as consumer-provided criteria since it is largely or exclusively dependent upon one or a few people and the decision to define the criteria is made at a past point in time.
Reviews are often sought by shoppers to help make an informed decision about buying a product or service. It is desirable to provide an efficient interface to present reviews to users and to help users to shop effectively.